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Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Porcini Matte

I had a hard time deciding what colors to use this week. But I had these (and a few other Essie colors) burning a hole in my polish drawer, so decided to just play around a little. I decided that pink and gray suited my mood at the moment. The pink is "Porcini" from Essie, and has gold mica in it that makes it shimmer very prettily. The gray is "Chinchilly", also from Essie, and really does remind me of a chinchilla's fur. I started with 2 coats of Porcini, which turned out fairly opaque, but left my tips a little translucent in the right light.

I couldn't decide whether to do a diagonal with the Chinchilly, or tips, but the translucent issue decided the matter. So I tipped my nails in the gray, which incidentally, was somewhat difficult to work with (odd, since the Porcini was fine). You'll notice my smile lines are a bit "off" - I blame it on the polish.

I wanted to add some sort of simple design, but not too much. So I got out my dotting tool, and just added a few gray dots falling below the smile line, curving up and back down.

Then I added a few pink dots above the smile line, for a little added interest. This is where it gets a little funky. That happens sometimes at 1am. I had my Essie "Matte About You" topcoat sitting there, and decided to see what the design would look like in matte.

Interesting, no? It looks like porcelain to me, almost velvety, and merges the dots and background colors into what looks like a solid pattern. I was rather intrigued, and decided to leave it that way for the time being.

Here's what it looks like today, all cleaned up. You'll notice I've got some tip-pull already...I think that's my base coat. I need to get a fresh bottle. I'm not sure I like how Porcini looks in matte form next to my skin, but I do like how these turned out, over all. I haven't played with this matte topcoat nearly enough, methinks. I may go back over them with glossy topcoat later in the week, just for something different.

Next week, I have some of thoes Zoya ultra-sparkly glitters to try, and I think I'll see what this matte topcoat does to them. Might as well experiment before the matte trend disappears, right? Or do you think it will stick around for awhile? Do you wear matte polishes?